Butcher: Welcome to the Night

(Classic) Heavy Metal

3.0/5.0

Figuring out Butcher's Welcome to the Night, their first release in 14 years, is nearly an exercise in futility. Practicing classic Americanized NWOBHM, Butcher shoots themselves in the foot with a menagerie of nonsense infecting an otherwise good classic heavy metal outing.

There's 26 tracks on this album, but finding the metal is a challenge. Hint: it's mostly at the end. Thirteen segments on Welcome to the Night consist of strange, and unnecessarily superfluous, parodies of radio promos, commercials and Emergency Broadcast System warnings. What the hell? It's an amazing waste of time. Additionally the album cover art is ridiculous. Words fail me here: gross, stupid, preposterous, ugly, or contrived. I guess they were thinking, 'We need a 'metal' album cover,' and this was their first best attempt. It's crap.

Fortunately, when you do get to the metal, you discover that Butcher knows their craft. Battleaxe, Wreck N Ball, and Halloween are excellent examples of primal and fundamental metal, the metal upon which all current metal is built. Vocals are shared between the female vocals of Lil Tang and founder Stone Age, and both are pure metal strong. The production is vibrant and clear often showcasing the individual contributions like the bass line on Gates of Hell.

Bottom line: listen to Butcher's Welcome to the Night for the traditional heavy metal and forget all the other worthless bullshit within. You might be impressed. Butcher would have had a better chance if they would have published the songs on a single album and not all the other crap.

In Short

Bottom line: listen to Butcher's Welcome to the Night for the traditional heavy metal and forget all the other worthless bullshit within. You might be impressed.